UNI student’s sports blog draws national attention

University of Northern Iowa student Emily Droessler has turned an assignment from a digital advertising class into a professional opportunity.

When UNI marketing instructor Matthew Wilson asked students to create a personal brand using social media, Droessler, a junior, created a blog called Sports & Media that wound up attracting the attention of two NBA teams, the New York Knicks and the Philadelphia 76ers.

Among other things, her blog explains how athletic teams use social media, but it also has lots of how-to information for sports fans.

Earlier this week, she wrote that the Philadelphia Wings lacrosse team was the first American sports team “to put their twitter handles on the back of jerseys for a game. … After the game the jerseys were auctioned off to the public and proceeds were given to the American Cancer Society.”

In another recent blog, she explained how sports teams are using Pinterest, the social media site created by Des Moines native Ben Silbermann, to attract more female fans.

Back in January, Wilson told Droessler and other members of his digital advertising class that he wanted them to “think about your dream job five or 10 years down the line, and then work towards it by using social media to create a personal brand.”

“Emily wants to be in sports marketing,”Wilson said.

Her dream job would be working for the Olympics.

Wilson suggested that she start using social media, such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs, to write about how athletes and sports teams use social media to expand their fan base and, ultimately, sell more tickets.

“That’s exactly what she did,” he said.

To date, she has written 14 blogs of 500 to 700 words each.

The key, of course, is to write about something that is of interest to a large number of people, Wilson said.

One of Droessler’s early efforts was about Knicks star Jeremy Lin.

Wilson had taught his class how to gather statistics for various forms of social media, and Droessler used those analytics to find out how many people were following Lin on different social media platforms.

“She started writing this great content, and content is king,” Wilson said.

“The great thing about blogs and tweets is that anybody can see them,” he said.

“You write about Jeremy Lin, a topic that everybody is talking about and everybody is searching for information about, and inevitably people find it.”

“She got contacted by a representative of the Knicks, and the same week she got contacted by a social media consultant to the Philadelphia 76ers and asked to contribute to their sports marketing blog, which is called The Field,” Wilson said.